Grim hunt for secret graves at school for young offenders

Jon Swaine in New York

Human remains have been found buried in the grounds of a notorious former institution for young offenders in Florida, amid fears that dozens of pupils were secretly killed there more than 50 years ago.

The skeletons of two youths were discovered during an excavation this week at the Arthur G Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, near the border with Alabama, which was closed in 2011.

Grim dig: a grave is exhumed at the now closed Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Photo: Reuters

Radar searches have indicated that as many as 50 graves are located in one area near the dreaded school for young offenders, where former pupils say boys were beaten, raped and tortured by staff.

Robert Straley, who attended for 10 months after stealing a car at 13, estimates that more than 100 boys were killed over the decades. "The school opened in 1900 and the very ground it sits on is soaked in their blood," he said.

Mr Straley, now 63, recalled feeling that his "spine was going to crack" when he was regularly abused by two men, who would visit him as he slept and drag him to an underground basement.

"At least once a week for forty-eight years I felt that weight push down on the edge of my bed, as an invisible demon from my past visited me once again," he wrote in a memoir.

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Most of those who disappeared are believed to have been black youths, whose families had no way of finding out what happened to them, during what was an era of legalised racism in the south of the US.

Erin Kimmerle, an anthropologist from the University of South Florida, who led the excavation, said the two youths whose remains had been recovered so far were probably aged between 10 and 13.

The family of one former pupil, Owen Smith, has said they were told by school officials that he died of pneumonia after crawling under a building to stay warm.

However, a friend said that Owen tried to run away and was shot.

Owen's sister Ovell, now 84, told CNN: "I believe to this day that they shot my brother that night, and I think they probably killed him and brought him back to the school and buried him."

Florida authorities began looking into the allegations of abuse in 2008, after a group of former pupils calling themselves White House Boys - after an outhouse where they say beatings took place - were reunited on the internet and lobbied for an inquiry.

A report in 2009 accounted for 31 boys buried around the school. However, it did not explain what happened to dozens of other pupils believed to have died there, whose bodies have not been found.

Elmore Bryant, a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, who lives in Marianna, said: "They were poor kids and a lot of times, people never came to visit them.

"Even when they were dismissed, they got home, their family had moved. So, who was going to pay attention if something happened to them while they was at Dozier?" Tananarive Due, who came to observe the excavation, told The Orlando Sentinel that her great-uncle, Robert Stephens, had died at the school in 1937.

"The official cause of death was a stabbing by another inmate, that's what it was listed as," she said. "But with so many of these boys, who knows how they died? Their families never had a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. Many of them just disappeared."

Wansley Walters, the secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, has pledged to get to the bottom of what happened.

"What we have now is an opportunity to really get down to the truth and also try to bring some healing to the victims and the families," said Ms Waters.

Troy Tidwell, a one-armed former administrator at the school accused of abuse by several former pupils, has admitted that "spankings" took place, but denied anyone was ever beaten or murdered.

Florida has no statute of limitations for murder, but police and prosecutors said they did not expect anyone to be held legally accountable for deaths at the school."The mission is really for the families," said Ms Kimmerle. "That's why we're here."